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Full-Text Articles in Forest Sciences
The Role Of Spiders In The Detrital Food Web Of An Eastern Deciduous Forest, Erin Elizabeth Hladilek
The Role Of Spiders In The Detrital Food Web Of An Eastern Deciduous Forest, Erin Elizabeth Hladilek
University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations
Historically, terrestrial food web research has focused on describing the structure of aboveground grazing webs, and determining how interactions among plants, herbivores and higher trophic levels influence primary productivity. Detrital food webs however, play a significant role in regulation of ecosystem dynamics through direct impacts on decomposition. Unraveling the complex nature of detrital food web structure is critical to developing a better understanding of ecosystem function. Therefore the primary objective of this research was to describe the structure of the leaf-litter food web in a temperate deciduous forest, with emphasis on interactions between a community of generalist predators, the forest-floor …